Other pages

Search

Eilis Hannon

Bioinformatics Research Fellow, University of Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter

Interests

My research focuses on integrating epigenetic, transcriptomic and genetic data to aid the understanding of the molecular aetiology of brain disorders. I am interested in understating how genetic risk factors for these disorders influence molecular variation in the brain.

My work

For the last 3 years I have worked as a Bioinformatics Research Fellow in the Epigenetics Group at the University of Exeter. At the end of my undergraduate degree in Mathematics at Cardiff University I wanted to take the knowledge that I had developed and apply it in other contexts. Genetics appealed to me as an opportunity to apply my skills to a cutting edge area of research with the potential to have benefit to patients.

During my PhD in Bioinformatics at Cardiff University, I gained knowledge in psychiatric genetics and experience of applied statistics by modelling gene expression across brain development. This led to my current position where I am involved in a wide range of research projects primarily focused on integrating different types of ‘omics data to understand the regulation of gene expression in the brain by adapting existing methodologies.

Increasingly I am involved in teaching programming and bioinformatics skills to staff and students at the University, primarily making use of the Software Carpentry materials. As bioinformatics analyses become more bespoke and complex, there is demand from both the scientific community and journals to make custom analysis software available. This can be a daunting endeavour regardless of your programming ability. As an SSI fellow, I want to help equip researchers with the knowledge and skills to not only make their code publically available but useable by the wider community.